It was summer 2024 and Lydia Whelan was tired. She wasn’t feeling like herself but put that down to the stresses and busy nature of modern living. When she discovered an indentation on her breast, however, she realised she needed to see a doctor.

Her doctor referred her for a biopsy, after which the then 32-year-old was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer.

“When I heard that, sure the waterworks started. My whole world felt like it was crashing around me. I was just like how? My partner was beside me and he was sobbing his heart out,” she said.

“I took that day to digest the news, I was very emotional. The next day when I got up out of bed, I thought ‘OK, what do I have to do today about this’?”

Whelan’s breast cancer is what’s known as HER2+, which is very aggressive, but doctors said very treatable.

This, according to William Gallagher, professor of cancer biology at University College Dublin (UCD), is one of the biggest changes that has happened in recent years in terms of cancer treatment and research.

“HER2+ used to be very difficult to treat. About 15 per cent of breast cancers have high levels of this protein called HER2 and it’s like a switch, it turns on the cancer and makes it very aggressive,” he says.

However, in recent years, various drugs have been developed to “turn off that switch” and target the protein “in different ways and in a more sophisticated manner”.

[ Irish Cancer Soc